TY - JOUR

T1 - Common opossum population density in an agroforestry system in Bolivia

AU - Benavides, Camila

AU - Arce, Alejandro

AU - Pacheco, Luis F.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia. All rights reserved.

PY - 2020/9/1

Y1 - 2020/9/1

N2 - The common opossum, Didelphis marsupialis thrives near human settlements. Understanding its ecology could help planning management decisions about this species, especially in anthropogenic landscapes. Yet, there are no density estimations for this species throughout its distribution range in Bolivia. We estimated the density of D. marsupialis in a rural agricultural community, where agroforestry plantations and fallows cover most of the land. We counted individuals in line transects and used DISTANCE software to calculate density. We covered a total of 70.21 km in 143 night counts, obtaining 38 records of D. marsupialis. We estimated a density of 0.30 individuals ha-1 (SE = 0.062; range: 0.20 - 0.45 individuals ha-1), with a mean encounter rate of 0.54 individuals km-1. Encounter rate varied between habitats, with mean values of 0.20 in secondary forests and 0.64 in agroforestry plantations. Our density estimate is near the lower range of previously reported values for the common opossum in other countries. We argue that our results may reflect the response to the availability of food resources and predation pressure in agroforestry plantations.

AB - The common opossum, Didelphis marsupialis thrives near human settlements. Understanding its ecology could help planning management decisions about this species, especially in anthropogenic landscapes. Yet, there are no density estimations for this species throughout its distribution range in Bolivia. We estimated the density of D. marsupialis in a rural agricultural community, where agroforestry plantations and fallows cover most of the land. We counted individuals in line transects and used DISTANCE software to calculate density. We covered a total of 70.21 km in 143 night counts, obtaining 38 records of D. marsupialis. We estimated a density of 0.30 individuals ha-1 (SE = 0.062; range: 0.20 - 0.45 individuals ha-1), with a mean encounter rate of 0.54 individuals km-1. Encounter rate varied between habitats, with mean values of 0.20 in secondary forests and 0.64 in agroforestry plantations. Our density estimate is near the lower range of previously reported values for the common opossum in other countries. We argue that our results may reflect the response to the availability of food resources and predation pressure in agroforestry plantations.

KW - Ecosystems Research

KW - Didelphis marsupialis

KW - tropical agroecosystems

KW - line transect

KW - DISTANCE sampling

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85093882205&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1590/1809-4392201903532

DO - 10.1590/1809-4392201903532

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 50

SP - 246

EP - 251

JO - Acta Amazonica

JF - Acta Amazonica

SN - 0044-5967

IS - 3

ER -